No Man's Sky Just Got Another Huge Update
Since its extremely rocky launch back in 2016, No Man's Sky has seen continuous development from Hello Games. The ongoing project saw the game gradually go from borderline pariah status to the product of an inspirational comeback story - and there are still no DLCs or microtransactions to be found in No Man's Sky. For six years, everything Hello Games has added to the game has been part of free updates.
No Man's Sky received another big update on Friday, called No Man's Sky Waypoint. It is version 4.0 of the game, and it was primarily focused on a wide array of quality of life changes. However there were also some improvements to the game's graphics and a difficulty redesign, among other things.
The quality of life changes include a restructured inventory system, aimed at making inventory management (traditionally one of No Man's Sky's least fun aspects) easier and less tiresome for players. To further aid with this, players will also be able to send a cargo rocket from a planet to the space station above, quickly selling stacks of items without needing to fly to the space station yourself. This allows you to keep exploring without worrying about losing track of where you were.
Elsewhere on the quality of life front, there is a reworked saving system, which should mean that players no longer have to worry about saving manually, although that is still an option for those who want it.
The developers have also added Crafting Trees to the game, a UI feature that lets you visualize exactly what you need to make in order to craft an advanced item. This is particularly useful when you are crafting something like fuel for your warp drive, which is a crafted item made from other crafted items. It's easy to lose track of what exactly you needed to mine and build, so this is a handy feature to help with that.
But there is more new stuff besides quality of life features. A new game mode was added to the game, called Relaxed Mode. This is kind of a halfway point between Normal Mode and Creative Mode, where there is still a bit of danger involved with exploration, but the experience is generally tailored to be easier, quicker and less grindy.
You will also be able to customize the difficulty in Normal Mode, setting up exactly how punishing you want things like combat, hostile planetary environments and resource scarcity to be.
For the more hardcore players, there will be a harsher version of Survival Mode, where conditions will be more challenging and there will be no vendors available, meaning you will need to rely on your own exploration, mining and crafting capabilities to survive in this especially unforgiving rendition of the No Man's Sky universe.
If you are trying out the new survival challenges, then you might find it helpful to go and mine some asteroids, as asteroid fields will now contain rare and exotic lumps of rock that can yield some especially rare materials.
To find out everything that's new, you can check out the official Hello Games announcement here, or watch the trailer below for a short visual representation of what's new.
It seems like Hello Games still have plans for No Man's Sky, with the by now familiar phrase "More will follow" featuring in the trailer for the Waypoint update.
